I wonder if any consideration is given to the long-term damage being done to the value of a Stanford degree?

In a sense it’s a luxury good. Valuable and desirable for decades, resilient to brand mismanagement for years, then suddenly it’s on the shelf at TJ Max. I don’t think college reputations will take a gradual slide. I think they’re on a trap door and should stop jumping up and down.

Broad, lightweight courses at a Stanford tuition seems like a cash grab…. If they want exposure to humanities why not mandate a year of humanities, which is what they did at uni 50 years ago. There’s all sorts of departments they could choose from that would be way more interesting that a course intended for the aggregate entering class. Large lectures aren’t terribly interesting.